The former perspective sees the actions of a person as immediate qualities of their character and being, whereas the sociological perspective encounters the person as the expression of a history, material conditions, and cultural practices within which they emerge or are constituted.
(175)įor instance, when we shift from a naive perspective of everydayness to say a sociological perspective, we have made the shift from the doctrine of being to the doctrine of essence. – as a result, essence is being as shining within itself. – Being has not vanished but, in the first place, essence as simple relation to itself is being while on the other hand, being, according to its one-sided determination of being something-immediate, is degraded to something merely negative, to a shine. Essence– as Being that mediates itself with itself through its own negativity – is relation to itself only by being relation to another but this other is immediately, not as what is but as something-posited and mediated. In Essence the determinations are only relational, not yet as reflected strictly within themselves that is why the Concept is not yet for-itself. In the opening paragraph of the second division, Hegel writes:Įssence is the Concept as posited Concept. This can be seen with special clarity in The Encyclopaedia Logic (trans Geraets, Suchting, and Harris). For me, Hegel’s account of essence in the Science of Logic is especially interesting as it so nicely develops an ontology of relation, paying special attention to features of self-reflexivity. I suppose I’m not the first to have this sort of love-hate relationship with Hegel.
Frankly I find Deleuze’s Hegel unrecognizable and suspect that it’s Kojeve’s Hegel that’s being addressed though Deleuze, as a student of Hyppolite’s, was certainly in a position to know better. I also get nervous discussing Hegel as he’s been the object of such scorn in French theory.
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